Hey Martyn,

Glad I could be of service here. Yes, I believe content is just as an important part as design and development. On top of that you have strategy and tactics. Websites are online businesses – they need a clear objective of what they are trying to accomplish and your job is to take your client from the starting position all the way to finish. Launch with something *complete* and not just ready for them to take over.

* Understand the customer/market
* Interview all stakeholders
* Create a content inventory / sitemap
* Create drafts
* Present to client / revise
* Build into website

That’s just off the top of my head. We also have a more in depth course of at uGurus (I hate to self promote like this, but it’s so perfect): http://www.ugurus.com/conquering-content-delays

Thank you for writing that article. I particularly found the ‘customers don’t supply content’ part interesting as I’ve been one of those moaners who say, ‘Look, I’ve built a site for my customer and now they can’t even think of any content to place onto it’ … ‘What do they want from me?’ You’ve now made me realise that it’s ME who needs to team up with them and sort out content that will work for them.

Also, I was the world’s worst for selling a website and then NOT charging for those little bits n peices that they all insist on performing on their completed sites.

One recent customer added an eCommerce plugin and wanted help every step of the way. He got my services totally free of charge as he said, ‘the website wasn’t finished until the eCommerce part was working’, so I had to help. After reading your article, in future I will place ‘support’ in the proposal as an extra fee. Nice one.